Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/248

240 The bedroom opened out of the salon. There was a dressing-room between that and the little back room in which Barbe had slept, when she was in Mademoiselle Prévol's service. On her occasional visits Léonie Lemarque had occupied a truckle-bed in Barbe's room.

"How is it that Léonie Lemarque in all her visits never happened to see Monsieur Georges?" inquired Heathcote, when he had looked at all the rooms, peopling them in his imagination with the figures of the actress and her lover.

"Madame took good care to prevent that. She told me that Monsieur Georges hated children, and that the little one was to be kept out of his way."

"Did he never spend his mornings here? Was he only here at night?"

"Only at night. It was for that reason Madame Lemarque used to call him the night-bird. I think she was very angry because she was never allowed to see him—never invited to supper. Monsieur Georges used to take a cup of coffee early in the morning, and he left the house before most people were up. As early as five o'clock in summer, never later than half-past six in winter."

Hilda's presence at Penmorval was full of comfort and solace for Dora Wyllard. She had known Hilda all her life, had seen her grow from childhood to womanhood, had loved her with a sisterly love, trusting her as she trusted no one else. Hilda had been only a child at the time of Dora's engagement to Edward Heathcote; yet, even at eleven years of age, Hilda's tender heart had been full of sympathy for her brother when that engagement was broken off, and when Dora became the wife of another man. She had been angry, with vehement, childish anger. That Dora should like any man better than him who, in the fond eyes of the younger sister, seemed the prince and pattern of fine gentlemen, was an unpardonable offence.

Hilda at eleven was precocious in her knowledge of books, and very self-opinionated in her judgment of people. She told her brother she would never speak to Dora again, that she would run a mile to avoid even seeing her: and then, a few months after Dora's marriage, finding that her brother had forgiven that great wrong with all his heart, Hilda melted one